Silencing an old PC

[Dida]

I have an old gaming PC that I am about to retire and use as a media player: to watch movies and video clips. The issue here is with reducing the noise.
Currently, the PC has the following fans:
- 2 case fans
- 1 stock CPU fan
- 1 stock GPU fan
- 2 fans on the PSU

I intend to do the following:
- take out both case fans
- downclock both CPU and GPU, reduce fan speed to minimum using software fan control
- as for the PSU, there is not much I can do, but if it is determined to be the source of noise I will buy a quieter PSU, and swap out the old one to use in a new gaming rig

Is there anything I should do?

 

[warpus]

You could replace the fans you intend to keep with new & quiet versions.

 

[Cutlass]

won't make much more noise after that.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

If you're cheap and it's not prone to overheating, you could possibly use SpeedFan to slow it down. Although it's probably better to replace it.

Also, if it's media PC, some fast optical drives tend to be noisy. Slower ones, while slower, don't sound like they're about to explode in your face.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

You best bet is to get quiter fans. Scythe and Noctua make pretty good quiet fans, but they're pretty expensive.

 

[Zelig]

I took all the fans out of my old PC and made it a fanless PC.

 

[Dida]

I took all the fans out of my old PC and made it a fanless PC.

A Fanless PC is nice indeed, but if I do that I will need to make a serious investment in cooling solutions. It is not worth it for my 5 year old pc.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

I took all the fans out of my old PC and made it a fanless PC.

Depending on the specs of the pc, I would either advise to do this, or to avoid this.

I wouldnt trust a 3.4ghz P4 to a fanless system simply because it produces so much heat.

A Fanless PC is nice indeed, but if I do that I will need to make a serious investment in cooling solutions. It is not worth it for my 5 year old pc.

Not necessarily. Your current cooling may be fine for fannless, or less fans. Im pretty sure if you cleaned up the wiring and made sure your cpu fan was adequate, you could remove those two case fans.

 

[Zelig]

Depending on the specs of the pc, I would either advise to do this, or to avoid this.

450 MHz Pentium II, onto which I slapped a random copper heatsink I had lying around.

I even ripped the fan out of the power supply.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Those kinds of specs? Yeah, Id go fanless too. In fact, my old P3 850mhz pc is completely fanless right now, and its serving as our home NAS. You dont even really need a copper heatsink, I have an aluminum one on one of the processors, and it works just fine ( Dual-CPU board)